Air
by skysedge
Summary: The streets are filled with people breathing. Oneshot. Cassian-centric.


**A/N - **_Username change from **Sorryll **to **skysedge **to match with my other current accounts and to hopefully motivate me into writing more. So hello again to anyone who's seen me around before. This is hopefully the first in a lot of little oneshots I will be posting, we'll see how it goes. Any reviews are greatly appreciated and I'll be sure to reply to all of you. Enjoy!_

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"Sorry, lady. Just doing my job."

Cassian always apologises to the victims. It is just something that he feels he has to do. Three months at Delilah and the coldness of his actions are starting to become routine. The little things, like the apologies, are important.

Usually he'll do it while they are still breathing, fatally wounded but clinging to life with the familiar agonised drawing of air into slowing lungs. That way, he can pretend that they will hear and forgive him. It's one of many secret rituals that enables him to feel human when he tries to sleep at night, as necessary for his own survival as oxygen.

This one is leaking blood from her nostrils. He'd dealt her quite a blow then, having been hiding on top of an ornate court cupboard in her sitting room and launching himself with one elbow and one knife down when she came home. A slice across the throat, a strike to the head, an apology, job done and dusted. Well, other than the messy bits.

"Could've been quicker, too. Sorry about that."

He watches her for a while, putting off the inevitable duties as long as is sensible. She's pretty, slender, a natural blonde rather than a slave to the incompetent quacks that call themselves doctors of beauty and other such nonsense. A useful fashion when it comes to testing chemicals, or parasites as it had been then, on unsuspecting women but the whole thing makes Cassian's skin crawl. He saw enough powder and rouge at the circus. Natural women are always the most beautiful. _Honesty _is beautiful, now that he thinks about it.

Her blood is honest as it spills across the floorboards in the wake of his knife through her abdomen. The soft sucking sound of her organs as they are lifted from her body are honest too. This is the sort of honesty that the doctor likes, Cassian is sure of that by now. Well he can have the damn things and be done with it. _He_ doesn't need to fight the ghosts away when he sleeps. He's as heartless as the air itself.

"They'll pick you up soon."

Organs carefully deposited into jars for carrying, Cassian swings the bag onto his back and deftly lets himself out via a window. By the time he leaves the alleyway outside he looks just like any other street urchin.

The streets are filled with people breathing.

He walks slowly, head down, ears filled with the words and laughs and cries and gasps of Londoners passing the day just like any other. Some going to work, some spending their money, some gathering news. These are all little things that make the world turn for normal people. At least, he thinks so. He has never been anything remotely like 'normal' but is getting a grasp on things now that he works for Delilah. The people work, shop, talk and he kills, mutilates, delivers. And here he is, breathing the same air as them while a pair of lungs sits in a jar under his arm and lies still in stagnant air.

It is all so unfair, isn't it? He can't help but think about it as he passes through the crowd as if he belongs there. These people at the top and he and the organs on a lower level of existence. The whole world functions like the workings of Delilah itself but everyone shares the same air. No amount of apologising can fix a crime like that. And nothing will ever be enough to redeem him for continuing to sin, day after day.

He thinks of the natural blonde, her last breaths scratching at the air. Wounded, failing, just clinging on. His whole life is like that, a silent death rattle in every breath he takes. He does not belong here. As often as he apologies and pretends to be human, being around those who could never understand feels wrong. His skin prickles beneath his clothes and he breaks into a run. Heading back to headquarters , he thinks of nothing but the thud of each small foot as it hits the cobbles.

He knows what he is. Nothing more than the shadow of a monster. The cold winter air still burns his human lungs as he runs.


End file.
